Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation Awarded to Coppin State

Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation Awarded to Coppin State

Published Thursday, September 14th, 2017

The award has been granted to support the open educational resources (OER) work in support of system-wide implementation.

Baltimore, MD – Coppin State University has been selected to receive an Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation for FY 2018. The award has been granted to support the open educational resources (OER) adoption work of Dr. Katherine Cameron, Associate Professor of Psychology at Coppin.

“We are so proud of Dr. Cameron’s work in support of open educational resources and the statewide implementation goals,” said Coppin State University President Dr. Maria Thompson. “The cost savings that are being generated for students, along with the satisfaction being realized by faculty, successfully meets the ambitions of the Maryland General Assembly and the goals of the 2017 Textbook Costs Savings Act. I’m so pleased that Coppin is contributing to this academic transformation and that Dr. Cameron has been recognized with an Elkins Professorship.”

The Elkins Professorship for Academic Transformation is awarded competitively to a faculty member in the University System of Maryland to support a project that can foster or illuminate improvements in access, quality of outcomes, and/or stewardship of people’s time, money, and other scarce resources. Recognition for work on “academic transformation” advances at least two of those three goals.

“I am very lucky to have been part of the MOST initiative almost since its inception,” said Dr. Cameron. “Improving access to educational materials benefits the entire University System of Maryland, and is particularly critical for students facing significant challenges to earning a college degree. I’m grateful for the Elkins Professorship as acknowledgement of the importance of this mission, and look forward to my continued work with the Kirwan Center on system-wide implementation.”

The University System of Maryland’s William E. Kirwan Center launched the Maryland Open Source Textbook (MOST) initiative three years ago to support the replacement of traditional textbooks with OERs in over 60 different courses at 14 public higher education institutions across the state of Maryland. The initiative has resulted in over $1 million in cumulative cost savings for over 3,500 students. Additionally, faculty have gained the ability to adapt and customize their teaching materials to ensure alignment with instructional methods that best meet student needs.